The great Unam Sanctam Catholicam has put together some videos (and is working on more) to help catechize Catholics on the subject of marriage, the marital act, and sins opposed to these great, God-given goods. Longtime readers are probably already brilliantly catechized on this subject by me (modesty!), but I picked up a number of good points from these videos. I highly recommend everything USC produces, and these videos are of course included.

The first video briefly examines what marriage is, what it is ordered towards (primarily procreation, NOT unity/comfort of the spouses), and then switches to the evil of sodomy or “homosexuality.” It also covers corruptions of marriage like polygamy that, due to men’s hardness of hearts and incomplete revelation, were permitted in the Old Testament times.

The second video focuses more on the ends of marriage and how those ends have become corrupted by fallen men over time. Even within the Church, as we consider the shocking deliberations of the Extraordinary Synod, many have become corrupted by disastrously false understandings of marriage and all related matters. Marriage has natural and supernatural ends. More good stuff!

Y’all have a good night! I had a bad day, pray for me! Nobody likes the prophet of doom, I suppose. But it’s pretty defeating to find support lacking where one would most expect it (and know, dear reader, I do not mean you).

Someone asked me to fisk one of these charts a while back. The one below is actually probably one of the more thoughtful ones, so I’ll tackle it. The others are even easier to refute, since they seem to conflate “Christianity” to “things I think Jesus directly said.”

Going from left to right –

“Because Jesus said so.” They claim this is false. They can only base this claim on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the Holy Trinity, not comprehending that any action taken by any of the Three Persons is in essence taken by all. So since we know Scripture was written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and since sodomy and the sins of gomorrah are condemned throughout Scripture, we know that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit condemn these sins.

Having said that, I believe that Christ at least tacitly condemns the sin of sodomy/perverse lust in all of the three Synoptic Gospels through multiple references to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. To wit, Saint Matthew x:14-15:

And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words; going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust form your feet. Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

What does this quote, and others like it, tell us? It tells us Jesus Christ, who is perfect charity but also perfect justice, saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as the just recompense for their sins. And what were those sins? Not the truly pathetic canard of “lack of hospitality,” but unnatural lusts/acts of grave perversion! Why was the entire city struck blind before its destruction? For trying to forcibly rape – sodomize – Lot, his family, and the angels sent to judge the place. Remember that not even 10 just men could be found in the city, for whose sake the Lord would have spared the entirety. That is because sins of perversion lead to a reprobate sense, and also demand others to fall into that sense, so that the entire city was eventually corrupted from probably a small initial cadre. Something for us all to remember.

“The OT also say its sinful to eat shell fish, pork, etc” Please, this is just stupid, because the New Testament actually features at least as many condemnations of sodomy as the old. However, as this link makes clear, the creator of this flowchart is deliberately conflating the ceremonial law and the moral law. The ceremonial law of the old covenant is obsolete, it has been wiped out by the New Covenant. The moral law, however, remains always and forever, so that the 10 Commandments and other aspects of the moral law remain. We in fact know they remain because the Apostles/authors of the New Testament were at pains to make clear that the moral law was still in effect, while the ceremonial law was obsolete. Thus Saint Paul’s numerous condemnations of “Judaizers” who tried to foist the old, obsolete ceremonial law on the Church.

“Oh so the New Testament actually does condemn sodomy, but it also condemns other things men today find offensive and we should therefore feel free to pick and choose among what we like and do not like.” That’s literally the argument proposed. Once again, this link destroys the notion that Saint Paul just happened to choose words that could be misinterpreted to include sodomy. WRONG. Saint Paul specifically and deliberately denounces sodomy – so much of the early Church was in Greece, where man-boy relationships still existed! – in many of his Epistles. In addition, Our Lord Himself condemned all sexual activity outside the confines of one-man, one-woman marriage. As for St. Paul ostensibly being a misogynist for calling for women not to speak in Church and for wives to be obedient to their husbands, once again, you can see how trying to justify one particular sin inexorably leads to the dismissal of whole swaths of Scripture, and the creation of a false religion of human origins. I really don’t care what kind of insult a lost worldly self-justifying soul tries to slap on me for adhering to Scripture, our Blessed Lord told us the world would hate us, so there you go.

“Because the Bible clearly defines marriage as being between one man and one woman – Wrong the OT said multiple wives were OK” Well once again you have someone deliberately twisting Scripture to their own ends, conflating aspects of the OT we know are obsolete (especially in this case, since Jesus Christ directly told us so) with aspects that were carried over to the New Covenant. The Lord condemned Jewish divorce and serial adultery directly, saying it was only permitted for their hardness of heart. Multiple wives were obsolete in Jewish practice even well before the Incarnation.

All of these arguments are paper thin and patently self-serving. They are proved to be that way by the negative conclusions reached – in both cases you’re a worthless bigot and shameful neanderthal for not adhering to the pro-sodomite propaganda. It is an amazing condemnation that this obviously self-interested sodomite activist (who also has to have more than a passing if self-deluded knowledge of Scripture) could actually reasonably appeal to his side – open adherence and advocacy of an unspeakable evil – by claiming that HIS is the side of civilization and reason. Please. But that is effectively the coup these sexular sodomite pagans, with the media constantly at their side, have been able to achieve.

The link I point to above makes another very important point: the Bible is not the sole rule of Faith, nor is it just a book full of “thou shalt not’s.” Because of the constant battles we find ourselves faced with in dealing with the world, the flesh, and the devil, sometimes it can seem like that.

In reality, the Bible presents a beautiful, sublime, and timeless approach to male-female relations, the creation of family, and the right ordering of all society with the wholesome family as the building block. The Bible has far more to say that is positive about marriage and the family that it has negative proscriptions. Unfortunately, almost the entirety of that edifying truth has been forgotten, or, I should say, forced down the memory hole by sexular pagans who desired to create a humanist “utopia” cut off from God. We’ve been living in that experiment for 400+ years and finally starting to reach the end game – a society so perverse as to pretend that sodomy = marriage.

As I’m sure most readers are aware, muslim President Obama has concluded a disastrous treaty with Iran, basically allowing that insanely hostile muslim state to pursue a nuclear weapon’s development program with very few limitations, in exchange for which all sanctions – persisting for decades – against the world’s number one sponsor of islamist terror will be lifted. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of frozen assets will be freed up, providing the regime both the with wealth it needs to remain in power, and excess cash with which to export death and destruction around the world.

But what most people do not know is that the Republican party, supposedly so opposed to his agenda, has taken positive steps to insure this treaty will pass into law. Months ago, the Republicans working under Senator Bob Corker voted to change procedure regarding the passage of this treaty. Instead of requiring a 2/3 majority as per regular senatorial procedure for a treaty, they changed it to a simply up/down vote. Since Obama could veto the Senate Republican voting down of the treaty, and since a veto requires a 2/3 majority to overcome, what the Republicans in essence did was to let the democrats pass this treaty on a 1/3+1 minority vote!

So everything you have seen from the Republicans on this subject has been complete, 100% kabuki theater. Or, more correctly, failure theater. All the committee hearings, all the sturm and drang, all the serious faces at the long-prepared press conferences, all the rhetoric used on establishment Republican media like Fox News has been complete balderdash. These men deliberately conspired with Obama months ago to make this treaty all but invincible in terms of up or down votes and it will become the law. And Iran will become a nuclear power, with a government that sees as its sacred mission the bringing about of an Armageddon that will lead to the exaltation of their satanic religion.

Do you remember how Mitch McConnell schemed to increase the debt limit, while suckering conservatives with a claim that conservatives voted against it?

The scheme worked like this: Congress authorized the president to increase the debt limit on his authority. (Actually, we’re already at the stage of falsehood, because he wouldn’t be raising the debt limit on his own authority, but with the authority Congress had just voted him.)

Now, the deal also granted, supposedly, Congress the power to block the raising of the debt limit, by voting a “resolution of disapproval.”

But here’s the thing: The president can veto that.

Which is what he did, of course.

So the debt limit was raised in this way:

1. Republicans voted to give Obama the power to raise the debt limit. They didn’t take responsibility for this themselves; they just said Obama could do so, if he wanted.

2. But Republicans retain the right to “block” it, supposedly, with a vote of disapproval.

3. But which Obama can veto — which every Republican knows he will do.

4. McConnell, Corker, and all the other other con artists now get to claim they didn’t raise the debt limit. Heck, they even voted aResolution of Disapproval against it.

What they don’t tell you is that this had been designed from the start to pass the debt limit increase, with a fake Resolution of Disapproval voted on and vetoed, which had been planned from the start, so that they could lie and say they “voted against” the increase in the debt limit.

Well, Corker’s alleged “compromise” with the Democrats and Obama on the Iran “deal” plays exactly the same game with foreign policy.

This whole scam is about giving Obama exactly what he wants – a nuclear Iran – while allowing the Republicans to pretend they voted against it, when they didn’t they actually conspired to insure this treaty would be approved.

And now that what they schemed and planned to do for months is coming fully to fruition, McConnell “admits” it will be impossible to stop Obama’s Iran treaty from passing, but what he doesn’t say is that he and Corker and other squishes conspired to make this happen.

Even just a couple of years ago, I very strongly believed that there were crucial distinctions between the democrat and republican parties that made support for the latter crucial, at any level of government. At the federal level in particular, I no longer believe that. Even with historic majorities in both houses the Republicans have not done a single thing to slow down, let alone retrench, the progress of socialism and the sexular pagan agenda in this country. In fact, ostensible Republicans like Justice Anthony Kennedy always seem to play the key role in assuring the next great leap downwards. And Chief John Roberts has twisted himself, and the law, into pretzels to keep Obamacare constitutional, when it blatantly is not.

The point seems to be, the elite has interests that conflict with the vast majority of the base (not to mention the moral order), and both parties now exist solely to service that elite. The elite likes Planned Barrenhood, so I doubt even this latest expose will lead to anything but a series of small headaches for them. If Republicans cannot ever convince even one or two demonrats to switch to their side on any important issue, and yet 6 or 10 or 20 Republicans can always be found to switch to the democrats, what is the point? They’ll never have a majority large enough to do anything to turn this nation around and stop the descent into amoral barbarism.

I’m sorry, the only thing the Republican party has been good for in the last 15 years is starting endless wars and getting more tax breaks for the very wealthy. In the meantime they do a whole bunch of bad stuff. That’s not enough to maintain my support.

I was gratified that many readers seemed to find the catechesis against cussing and taking the Lord’s Name in vain helpful. I thought this further section on a different subject- honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy – equally helpful. There is a lot of good material, I may have to break it into two posts. Again from the “Spirago-Clarke Catechism,” I found a number of points below either new to me, or better explained than any I had seen before. I pray you find this helpful!

Sunday was appointed by the Apostles as the day of rest instead of the Sabbath, because Christ rose form the dead on a Sunday.

Sunday is a festival of the Holy Trinity; for on the first day of the week God the Father began the work of creation, God the Son rose from the dead, and God the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles. The Apostles were authorized to transfer the day of rest form Saturday to Sunday, because……..the Old Law was but a shadow of the new……..

….We are bound on Sunday to abstain from servile work and to assist at the public Mass; we ought, moreover, to employ this day in providing for the salvation of our soul, that is to say by approaching the Sacraments, by prayer, hearing sermons, reading spiritual books, and performing works of mercy.

Servile work is that which entails severe physical exertion, and is exhausting to the bodily strength. It is the work generally done by servants, menials, artisans, and laborers……..Markets and all commercial transactions are included in the prohibition; yet, in deference to local customs, the rule is relaxed in some countries. However, buying and selling must not be carried on during the hours of divine worship. [A couple of comments: I have been assured by some traditional priests that doing things like going out to eat, or visiting a museum (that require other people to work) is OK on a Sunday. But I know others who feel that this is not OK. Regarding the hours of divine worship, which is an interesting and I think poignant distinction, so many parishes offer Mass all day on Sunday by necessity. So would this prohibition vary by parish boundary or just be confined to the primary hours of worship (morning) or?] As God rested on the seventh day, so we ought to rest. As Christ on Easter Sunday left the grave-clothes in the sepulcher and rose triumphant, so we ought to lay aside our earthly business, and on the pinions of prayer soar aloft to God. Physical repose is necessary, because it is impossible for one who is greatly fatigued to pray well. Public worship is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, generally accompanied by a sermon……..There is no act of Christian worship that can compare in dignity and value with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.On Sunday we ought to provide for the interests of our soul; physical rest is ordained in order that we may labor more diligently for our spiritual welfare; and we must not content ourselves with putting on better clothes, but must cleanse and adorn our hearts. The cessation from the work of the week gives an opportunity to the faithful, in compliance with the mind of the Church, to approach the Sacraments. They are encouraged to receive Holy Communion on Sundays and Holy days, and to give themselves to prayer; for this reason afternoon services are held, and the churches stand open for private devotions. Our forefathers used to read spiritual books, homilies on the Gospel for the day, and the lives of the Saints. Many of our Lord’s miracles of healing were wrought on the Sabbath day. By this He intended to teach us to do good works on Sundays…….The cessation from labor on the seventh day foreshadows our eternal rest in Heaven. By solemnizing the day of the Lord we renew and quicken our longing for the unending festival of joy above. The very fact that we wear our best apparel on that day serves to remind us of the celestial happiness that we hope will one day be our portion. [The Fathers saw implications in this: those who dressed their finest for Mass (and with the correct humble disposition) were seen to be better prepared/inclined towards salvation, as they were already anticipating the eternal joy. Those who dress improperly, especially immodestly, reveal themselves to be mired in attachments to the world]

The work permitted on holy days of obligation is 1) servile work that is absolutely necessary, especially works of mercy; 2) light and trifling work; 3) occupations of an intellectual nature; 4) reasonable recreation

We are not forbidden to do work that is absolutely necessary. Our Lord does not desire man to suffer on account of the Sunday rest, for He says: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mk ii:27). All work may be done which is required for the support of life; we may have our food prepared, and are allowed to gather in our crops if weather threatens their destruction. [Two points: having food prepared may be the justification for going to a restaurant on Sunday. Also, the family who farms our land has refused to work on Sunday going back 100 years or more. That used to frustrate my grandfather, but they maintain they have never lost a crop for not working on Sunday] All work that is indispensable for the public service may be carried on; railroad, airlines, telephone, police, hospital staff, etc. Ecclesiastical authorities have the power to grant special permission for servile work to be done on Sunday, if there is sufficient reason. Christ says: “The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath also,” and the Church, His representative, can say the same. And as the chief and primary object for which Sunday is instituted is to promote the spiritual welfare and eternal salvation of mankind, all works tending to this end are enjoined upon us.…….Works of mercy are also enjoined; nothing is more profitable to salvation than these, for on them our eternal fate depends (Mt xxv:25). We have Christ’s example and precept also for the performance of charitable works on Sunday: “It is lawful to do a good deed on the Sabbath day” (Lk xii:12)…….Yet it must also be remembered that only such servile work as is absolutely necessary is permitted, although its object be a charitable one. For it is lawful to do all servile work without distinction which was for the benefit of the poor, all artisans and laborers might go on with their work, and that would be by no means permissible (Suarez)……..Occupations of an unimportant kind can be engaged in, God does not require us to sit idle on Sundays; besides writing, music, and all the mental employments are lawful. Sunday is also instituted as a day of rest; on it we may freely enjoy innocent diversions. [What about highly active contact sports? This is not addressed, there weren’t many around when this catechism was written? Just wondering, are NFL Sunday games a violation of the Sabbath?]

The precept enjoining upon us to sanctify the Sunday is transgressed by doing or requiring others to perform servile work.

The Christian ought to allow his servants and even his cattle, to rest on the Sunday (Ex xx:10). [Alright you people, give your butlers, maids, cooks, stewards, footmen, etc. the day off! I know most of you are just lousy with servants waiting on your every need]Servants, apprentices, and all who are in a subordinate position, ought not to remain in a situation where they cannot fulfill their religious obligations. Servile work is a mortal sin, if it be done for more than two or three hours on Sunday without urgent necessity. Yet hard work, if done for a shorter time, or light work for the same time, is not mortal sin; nor is it so if a very valid reason is counted on as an excuse, nor again if a servant does what his master, without cogent grounds, requires of him, through fear of evil consequences to himself…….If scandal is given by doing servile work, even for a short time, it is a grievous sin. Our Lord says of one who gives scandal, “it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged around his neck and that he should be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt xviii:6).

The precept enjoining upon us to sanctify Sunday is transgressed by carelessness about attendance at public worship.

The precept enjoining upon us to sanctify Sunday is transgressed by indulging in diversions which are over-fatiguing, or which are of a sinful nature.

Games which involve much physical exertion, hunting, dancing, etc., ought to be avoided on Sunday; also those which lead to anything unseemly; brawls, extravagant expenditure, disinclination for work. [Does “ought to be avoided” = sinful?] Worse still, if the amusements are sinful in themselves; for whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin (Jn viii:34). Wor to him who chooses the day which is consecrated to divine worship to offend against God an injure his own soul most deeply. Some people take advantage of the day of rest to indulge more freely in vice. On Sundays, the devil tempts many to all manner of sin, pride and ostentation in dress, gambling, dancing, excess in eating and drinking…….To spend the Lord’s Day in worldly vanities amounts to a kind of sacrilege, to desecrate it by sin is worse than plundering the sanctuary.

———End Quote———

We try to make Sunday a special day, for the kids but also all of us. I’m an obsessive-compulsive hard-charger get things done type (what? you couldn’t tell?) so I have to keep myself from turning Sunday into Saturday Mk. II. So I’ve committed to spending most of the afternoon with one kid each Sunday, rotating through them all. I hope it is as meaningful to them as it is to me.

Enough for today. Tomorrow I’ll have a post to complete the subject. It will be much shorter. Thank you for your patience!